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Food Refusal Research Paper

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Conclusion
The goal of this review was to examine etiology and treatment of children with a specific severe feeding problem. To meet this goal, only studies describing children with food refusal, defined as a child's refusal to eat all or most foods presented which resulted in either the failure to meet caloric needs or dependence on supplemental tube feeds, were included. It should be noted that most studies that used the term, food refusal, did in fact describe participants that met this definition with only a handful of studies excluded because the participants were selective eaters who had no apparent problems with nutrition.
Even though all of the studies in this review included participants who met the same definition of food refusal, …show more content…

These same medical conditions were also found in the descriptions of the participants of the 38 intervention studies, leading one to the conclusion that medical problems, especially gastrointestinal problems, are predominant in the population of children with food refusal. Despite this finding, the role of medical management in the treatment of food refusal is still not clear. While several intervention studies mentioned the importance of treating the medical conditions that were comorbid with the child's food refusal, in the studies reviewed, it was not always clear how medical conditions were managed or that these conditions were managed sufficiently. This is significant as these medical conditions were mentioned in some studies as a reason why some children were not successfully weaned from supplemental tube feedings. Given that feeding disorders have been termed biobehavioral problems (Kedesdy & Budd, 1998), a more complete description of the medical treatment provided to children with food refusal should become a standard component of the intervention literature. This may provide a better guide for integrating medical and behavioral …show more content…

Appetite manipulation, which involved the elimination of tube feedings, and reinforcement of food consumption has been shown to be effective in one study (Kindermann et al., 2008). While this study did not involve the use of escape prevention, it is not clear if the outcome obtained with the young children in this study who had limited medical and developmental problems could be replicated with older children with a longer history of feeding problems. It may be the case that there is a continuum of severity even within the group of children defined as having food refusal, with only a subgroup requiring escape prevention. While the use of appetite manipulation, escape prevention, and other components have been described in successful treatment of a 6-year-old with long-standing food refusal (Gibbons et al., 2007), the combination of these components has, to date, not been widely used. A combination of appetite manipulation, escape prevention, and stimulus fading may prove to be not only an effective treatment for food refusal, but this combination may also decrease the duration of

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